Chapter 21#

Before Feng Bing’s marriage, two young eunuchs came from the palace and explained to him how men made love.#

At the time, a brocade screen separated them, but merely hearing it described aloud made him so ashamed that he was at a loss what to do with himself. Still muddled and naive, he asked, “Then am I on top or on the bottom?”

The young eunuch said, “That depends on your pleasure. But it’s comfortable on the bottom—let Top Scholar Pei serve you.”

It sounded nice, but in truth, Pei Dan marrying him was like marrying a princess. In outsiders’ eyes, he ought to be the bottom.

Feng Bing asked again, “Then Pei… Pei Dan will learn too?”

The young eunuch said, “He will. Top Scholar Pei studies very earnestly.”

Feng Bing really could not bear to listen. Yet when this night truly came, while bathing he wanted to prepare himself, and only then secretly regretted not having listened carefully back then. He smeared ointment and clumsily poked back there, but it gave him no pleasure at all, and he did not understand what was interesting about it. He was a man after all, not a princess.

But when Pei Dan bent down, he forgot all these doubts.

The youth’s naked body was like an overwhelming mystery.

Pei Dan’s eyes were very bright, as if eager to try, yet also a little panicked. To hide his expression, he kissed him without stopping; he even found Pei Dan cute. Pei Dan’s member was hard and hot as iron between his buttocks, but neither dared look down. The winter night was cold; above and below the water, cold and heat clashed. Feng Bing involuntarily pressed close to Pei Dan, so Pei Dan simply carried him out.

Both were dripping wet. Afraid he would freeze, Pei Dan peeled off his clothes, as if removing the last heavy layer of armor from him. The instant his skin met the air, Pei Dan immediately draped a dry long towel over him, wiped his hair, then gathered him back to the bedroom and sat down at the bedside.

Now, looking again at the red candles with dragon and phoenix dancing, Feng Bing’s face flushed and his heart pounded. The candlelight pressed gently, as if it knew better than he himself what was about to happen.

While kissing him, Pei Dan reached over and took a tube of something. One glance told him it was jade ointment, and he hastily looked away. Pei Dan knelt with one knee on the edge of the bed and looked at him: “Fourth Brother, can you…”

As if he wanted to make a request of him, but hesitated. The youth did not yet understand how to handle someone in bed; his posture was as inexperienced as his voice. Feng Bing waited in a daze, but Pei Dan ultimately did not say it. He only kissed Feng Bing to the innermost part of the bed, spread the ointment on his hand, and gently explored the secret place beneath him.

Feng Bing’s voice trembled: “Aren’t you going to blow out the lamp?”

The youth’s voice was wet: “Do you want the lamp blown out?”

Feng Bing fell silent again. He wrapped both arms tightly around Pei Dan’s neck and pulled him down, his breath spilling in fine threads against Pei Dan’s neck. Pei Dan knew he was shy, so he pulled the brocade quilt up, covering the rustling movements of their lower bodies. His fingers tentatively probed in. The entrance had already been soaked warm and soft by the hot water; the inner walls seemed to wake and suck, making Pei Dan hold his breath. Feng Bing’s face hovered between half-light and half-dark. In the daytime he wore solemn auspicious robes, Pei Dan’s calm and elegant wife; at night he was so fragrant and soft, so clinging.

Pei Dan himself was not very skilled either; he only remembered what the eunuch had said—be patient, find the spot where Feng Bing felt most comfortable. The jade ointment slowly melted, his fingertips gradually grew hot, as if their bloodlines were connected. After all, he was a naturally clever top scholar; Pei Dan quickly found it, gently rubbing and pressing, muffling all shameful sounds beneath the quilt. Feng Bing was like a fish thirsting for water, his body involuntarily stretching taut, even secretly lifting his lower body so Pei Dan could push his fingers in deeper. At last he pushed at Pei Dan, saying again and again: “It’s enough, it’s enough…”

Pei Dan lifted his eyes. The fingers below slowly withdrew, and in an instant were replaced by his endowment.

In that moment Pei Dan was not smiling; his expression was taut, and beads of sweat appeared on his forehead. Feng Bing was so frightened that he squeezed his eyes shut. He lifted his legs and hooked them around Pei Dan’s waist. At the moment of penetration, there was none of the pain he had expected—only a foreign sensation of being stretched to fullness. Though he could not see it, he knew that thing was frighteningly large. Inch by inch, it claimed territory. Under the brocade quilt, his heartbeat leaped fiercely. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Pei Dan gazing at him.

Then Pei Dan lowered his gentle lashes and lightly placed a kiss on his eyelids.

“Fourth Brother.” Pei Dan’s voice was hoarse; he treated this newly obtained address as a treasure. “Fourth Brother, you’re so tight…”

They did it many more times afterward. In the end the lamp was extinguished; under the large quilt with mandarin ducks sporting in water, they explored each other’s bodies in the dark. Feng Bing discovered that Pei Dan had a small dimple at his waist; at the slightest touch, he would gasp violently. Pei Dan’s waist was lean and taut, but his chest was unexpectedly broad and solid, blazing like fire; Feng Bing could not resist licking it. Pei Dan would even carefully gather Feng Bing’s long hair on the pillow, while his own hair hung in disarray. When Feng Bing’s nails scraped across his back or tugged at the ends of his hair, he would raise his head and laugh. Even though Feng Bing could see nothing, he laughed along with him for no reason, his heart drifting on the foam of the sea—crack, crack—he heard the sound of each bubble bursting.

Then Pei Dan lifted him up again, and the two sat facing each other, the most wanton position in a spring palace picture. Pei Dan thrust tirelessly from below upward, ramming him until his breath scattered, and he could not help crying out. He clung to Pei Dan’s arm and half rose, straining to bite Pei Dan’s ear, and called him: “Slow down… little husband!”

Little husband.

In a flash of inspiration, he was pleased to feel Pei Dan’s ear grow hot. He was his young husband—shouldn’t he be called little husband?

Fish swimming in a boiling cauldron, swallows nesting in a flying curtain, in scorching, brilliant, precarious danger, they were like those paired fish and swallows.

Pei Dan suddenly opened his eyes.

The corridor was deep, the pavilion far, embroidered curtains hung low; a gorgeous darkness fell like an iron curtain, while outside a cold, howling snow wind blew. Pei Dan’s chest rose and fell rapidly. A spring dream had been dreamed to the fullest, every hidden detail laid bare, and it was like a nightmare.

The youth in that dream was utterly solitary. For more than ten years he had been used to calculation, cold stares, and scheming, yet he suddenly crashed into a naive joy he had never known before. He was frightened and at a loss; he was awkwardly inadequate. But no matter how carefully he cupped it in his hands, he still seemed so clumsy—in the end, it shattered after all.

He could not protect it.

The moonlight after midnight slid lightly and mercilessly across the brocade canopy. Pei Dan slowly calmed down.

It was not yet dawn, but it was impossible to sleep again. He tidied himself a little, threw on his clothes, and rose, barefoot across the carpet. He casually took a scroll from the rack and began to read. Many sleepless nights after losing Feng Bing, he had spent them this way.

A single lamp, like a bean.

I hate that my young husband roams for years.

Before the mirror I apply no rouge.

I only burn incense and pray to Heaven.

… When he comes, I will speak with him:

You must change your wildness and cut off your madness.

From the Dunhuang quzi ci.

Yes, they had the same spring dream. Seventeen-year-old Pei Dan, in a modern story, would be a male high school student… too pure; it feels like he doesn’t even deserve the boundary limit = =